Jamie’s Weblog

Visual Location TagsI was wondering what you could use a camera in a Sat Nav unit for and came up with this: visiual location tags. Basically, you encoded geographic location as a 2D barcode and the GPS unit reads this code and plots a waypoint. Very handy for things like posters, estate agent’s flyers, etc. [...]

I read a report in the Economist a while back about Ireland’s economic growth. Contrary to popular belief, it hasn’t all been down to EU subsidies and grants — Greece has received similar benefits but hasn’t progressed like Ireland. Sure, there are other factors like a well-educated, english-speaking workforce and low corporation taxes but the [...]

According to an article in the Guardian today, over a third of PhD students fail to complete in 7 years. That seems pretty high even by my negative standards. The main reasons they cite are underestimating what a PhD requires, not really understanding what it’s about, over-ambition, lack of funding and supervisory problems. I guess [...]

There are really just two questions that you’ll be frequently required to answer: What’s it about?Enjoy this phase as it only lasts for about 6 months. Once someone has asked the question, and listened to the largely incomprehensible drivel that you’ll reply with, they’re highly unlikely to ever ask again. How’s it going?The true purpose [...]